


Something's Burning.

by Kaesteranya



Category: Gintama
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-07
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-21 03:02:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/220166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaesteranya/pseuds/Kaesteranya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A possible look into how Kawakami Bansai and Takasugi Shinsuke met, and why Bansai follows Takasugi in the first place. This takes place before the start of Gintama, well after the end of the Joui resistance but years before the beginning of the series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fate could create you and I.

There was something about that particular area of the city that appealed to him, especially in the city of autumn. Edo had been a lively city once, long before the Amanto ever came: it had been old but grand, rife with contradictions yet giving off its own sort of brilliance to residents and visitors alike. It shined ever brighter than before at present – they say that it’s the only city on Earth that one can see from outer space. Takasugi Shinsuke believed, though, that it was a cold light, a dead light from empty glass, steel and silicon towers, foreign and strange and conceited. They cut up the sky during the day, devoured the stars at night. They were, to him, representations of all things unnatural, most especially the alien race that created them.

 

That place, however, was different. It had been Yoshiwara once, before the Yato king Hosen had come and taken the entire district under – traces of its old grandeur remained, in the Chinese rooftops and liberal use of red on the pillars, the walls. It was a broken and toothless place now, home to the outcast and the exile when it had once been a paradise of women of the night. It was a gallery of villains that always seemed to be on the verge of self-implosion, or collapsing under the weight of all the sin and vice teeming from behind every rotting door, every shuttered window, every dark street corner. Combine that with the biting winds and constant onslaught of dead leaves from every tree, and there was an odd, rotten sort of beauty to the place that amused him. The sort of beauty he would love to die surrounded by, or, better yet, kill somebody in.

 

The thought made Takasugi smile. He lingered just at the mouth of one of the many alleyways cutting into the main roads of Old Yoshiwara, smoking, looking up at the trees and the skyline past their branches. There was blood pooling at his feet now; it must have started trickling down from the alleyway a few moments ago, when he had been distracted. It matched the shade of red of the leaves fluttering down to the ground, like a peculiar, dizzy sort of rain.

 

Not his work this time – at least, not directly. He took one last drag of his pipe before turning around, stepping out into the middle of the mouth of the alley. There was a man lying face first in a pool of his own blood, but that did not interest him.

 

“That was quick.”

 

The other man in the alleyway was very different from his victim. With his messy black hair and clean face and broad shoulders, in his long black coat and dark shades and large headphones, Kawakami Bansai looked like something that belonged to another time and another place altogether from where they were now. The trace of music bleeding out from his headphones only increased that effect: it was something fast and heavy, high and strange.

 

Bansai smiled at Takasugi, cool and reserved. He flicked his sword clean, sheathing it into the shamisen on his back. He stepped forward and offered his hand, as any courteous man would to his company if he felt the latter was in need of some assistance. Takasugi ignored it. He was, for all his fine features and indolent ease, no woman, no stranger to death and destruction in any form. He had watched a bit of the hunt; it was only logical. A good businessman carefully monitored the progress of all of his investments.

 

Takasugi crouched low, right beside the body. The blood was soaking into the heels of his sandals; the smell was strong, overpowering the scent of the smoke from his pipe. He did not care. He had eyes only for the ragged lines torn through the man’s clothes, and the fine, almost surgical slices beneath them.

 

“Such clean work. Did it bore you, though?” he let the question linger in the air, pausing a moment to bring his pipe to his lips and take a drag. “They talk, you know, about the sort of jobs you take. The things you prefer, the ways you like to kill.”

 

Bansai did not respond, and Takasugi did not turn around to face him while he was speaking to him. When Bansai left, he left no trace of his presence in the alleyway, not even a trek from his boots. Takasugi did not move to stop him; it was almost as if he had not noticed.

 

***

They were together again two weeks later, on the second floor of a rundown motel. Bansai had one string from his shamisen wrapped around the neck of an old man. He tightened his grip, kept his knee against the small of the man’s back to keep him from moving much, held his target just above the ground to reduce the flailing and scuffling of his feet over the tatami floor. Takasugi was watching him three feet away with his chin in hand, perched on the window sill. He was haloed by the sunlight, which shone off the gold on the butterflies of his kimono. He had not brought his pipe; it was too hot to smoke much of anything.

 

The old man was a peculiar target, another one in a line of strange, inglorious contracts that Takasugi had given Bansai. They were nearly as strange as Takasugi’s method of contacting him were. In a world of cellular phones and high speed internet, the bandaged man carried on the way that the Japanese used to in times of adversity: written missives left in his apartment or his office, coded messages passed on to him by unknowing strangers. It was precisely the kind of method Bansai did not favor, and it wasn’t because it was old fashioned. Bansai was a careful man: he wanted to know the kind of client he was going to have before he agreed to anything. Because sound was everything to him, personal meetings, phone calls and online conferences allowed him to do that, to catch a even a chord of their music and know, from just the first few notes, whether they were going to be worth his time or not. Penmanship did nothing for him, and seeking out another in someone else’s voice was foolish.

 

He had ignored clients before, Bansai suddenly realized, for attempting to hire him in such a fashion. As he stood there, strangling his quarry and waiting for the thrashing about to weaken into nothing, he found himself wondering why he was even agreeing to all of this in the first place. It wasn’t until the old man went limp in Bansai’s arms did the assassin figure things out for himself.

 

“And now I know that you will not hesitate, no matter who the target is.”

 

Bansai detached the string from his shamisen with one decisive tug. He looped it about the old man’s neck, tossed the remaining length over the wooden beam directly above them. An effortless pull, and the corpse was hanging, swinging lightly in the breeze coming in from the window. He could feel Takasugi’s one good eye on him throughout the entire process, but from where the man was sitting, it was hard to see his expression.

 

Takasugi did not come to oversee all of the kills he had Bansai make, and there was no discernible pattern, no way of knowing whether he was going to show up or not. This too, perhaps, was done on purpose.

 

“These tests are unnecessary, I daresay.” Bansai took the shamisen from his back, caressing its neck, twisting its knobs, tuning it. “You are satisfied enough with my work to hire me repeatedly, are you not?”

 

“Is that why you think I do this?”

 

Bansai’s fingers went still, hovered right over the last knob. Even with the way the man was sitting against the light, he knew that Takasugi was smiling. A heartbeat later, the man was standing, heading for the door.

 

“Enjoy the rest of your day, Kawakami-dono.”

 

Bansai was distracted hours later, as he sat in an important meeting. He should have been attentive, of course, focused on interviewing a potential new musician for his record company. He was remembering, instead, how it felt to look another man in the eye and realize that for the first time in his life, he had no answers.

 

***

Much later, months down the line, after slaughtering children and infirms, junkies and whores, drunk ex-samurai and Bakufu half-wits, Bansai found himself on one end of a room full of corpses, watching Takasugi cut a man’s throat open through the spray of blood and falling halves of his latest victim.

 

He had known that Takasugi would be there that evening, the moment he had received the contract. He knew his patron now; he had pieced together the fragments from their brief exchanges, the silent observation, the things he made a point to read about the man in between one job and the next. It is odd for him to become that deeply invested in learning everything about a client and he knew it. He did not care: he couldn’t bring himself to. The curve of that smirk was a promise; that look in that eye held nothing but possibilities.

 

There was a light in it now, a crazy gleam sharp and wield as the steel of the knife that Takasugi was swinging through the air at that moment, plunging its tip through the center of another man’s forehead. No cool smiles, no confident smirks: just a grin that was a bit too wide to be sane as Takasugi used that same man as leverage, stealing his sword, running up on the falling corpse and springing off of its shoulders, bringing his next target down to the ground, running him through. He maimed a third by cutting his legs right out from under him, and killed a fourth in an afterthought.

 

Bansai could hear it in that moment, in the flying limbs and the blood and the mayhem, in the death throes and wild cries and wet gurgles. A song, low and quiet and sinister, heavy and steady and discordant. Perhaps it had always been there; he must have missed it, muted, as it was, by the calm veneer, the masks, the layers of control. Those had fallen away with every cut and kill, letting him see, for the first time since they met, the one who hid beneath.

 

There were shouts in the corridor behind him, and the rush of feet. Bansai faced them himself, greeting the first man that charged in with the sharp end of his blade. He turned around after he was done, and found nothing but bodies and an open door. He could trace the sight and sound of Takasugi walking away through the brief flashes of steel in the shadows, the distant echo of screams.

 

***

Bansai returned to his apartment in the small hours of the morning, when the moon already hung low in the sky. He stepped off the street and walked up the stairs, fingers drumming along the steel railings in an absentminded attempt to record the notes of the song he had heard that evening, during the fight. Occupied as he was, he only noticed the fact that the lights were on later, when he was already close enough to see that his door was open.

 

He didn’t draw the blade from his shamisen; he only paused at the threshold, glancing through the crack, listening for any sounds within. He was greeted by the glimpse of kimono sleeves rolling off of slender wrists, and the sharp, crisp notes of his piano. He entered without a word, and locked the door behind him.

 

“You’re back late.” Takasugi did not look up. He remained seated on the piano bench, tapping away at mismatched keys. “I was starting to get bored.”

 

“I didn’t think I’d have you as my guest tonight, I daresay.”

 

Bansai set his shamisen down by the door. He crossed the room, heading for the kitchen. He listened in on whatever it was that Takasugi was doing, even as he busied himself with a kettle and some water.

 

“I shall prepare tea for you, sir.”

 

Takasugi didn’t answer; he continued toying with the keys, testing scales, striking whatever caught his fancy. Bansai turned to watch him as he waited for the water to boil, studying his patron in the studio lights of his apartment, surrounded by his belongings, against his favorite piano. Just hours ago, Takasugi had been riding on the thrill of murder. Now he looked innocent, almost child-like, as he plunked out meaningless little tunes on the piano.

 

He only spoke after Bansai approached from behind, setting a steaming cup on top of the piano and right within reach.

 

“I have a new assignment for you.” Fingers moved to the white keys, then the black, then the white. Takasugi went for the tea cup afterward. “A personal one, you could say.”

 

Bansai circled around the bench and came to a stop by the side of the piano. “Weren’t the previous contracts personal?” he asked, turning to face his number one customer.

 

“No, not entirely.”

 

Takasugi sipped his tea. Bansai reached down, letting his fingers move through a simple scales on the keyboard.

 

“A man has been testing his blade on samurai along the bridge to Kabuki-cho.” Takasugi looked up at Bansai and smiled. “I wonder if you will be able to kill him.”

 

Bansai hit a full chord rather than a scale in the next moment, flexing his fingers in a spider-like fashion. Takasugi lifted himself up and away from the piano, but not before plunking out a few notes closest to Bansai’s hand. Their fingers nearly touch over the keys.

 

“This one will take time, I think. You will see what I mean soon enough.”

 

Takasugi let himself out. He did not bother to wait for Bansai to do it for him.

 

***

Two weeks passed before Bansai engaged the target. He spent the first week wandering through the area almost aimlessly, walking one way across the bridge and then the other, seeing nothing, finding no one. He got better at tracking his quarry down as time went on: he began to arrive, let’s say, just as the night watch was rushing over to inspect a fresh body bleeding itself out over the waters. Other times, he heard a whisper, caught a whiff of pipe smoke, felt someone watching him from a distance.

 

The weight of that gaze was familiar. After that long – after everything – he _knew_.

 

The next week was all about watching his target. He did not have to do this: he knew when to hide, when to reveal himself. But he had seen his quarry at work before; the image had burned itself across his eyes, destroying everything else. He wanted to prolong the moment, before he brought it all down himself.

 

He wanted, as well, to study Takasugi Shinsuke as he twisted the hilt of his blade inside the gut of another man just to listen to him scream, and think about the possible reasons why his new patron gave Bansai the right to kill him.

 

The fourteenth night found him calmly walking up the bridge as Takasugi took another life. He looked on as the bandaged man let his victim drop, letting it slip down unceremoniously from his sword, nudging the gasping man down into the river with a nudge of his sandal. He watched as Takasugi turned to watch it float up and float away, as the latter cocked his head, as if he were listening to distant music.

 

He was onto Takasugi before the other could react, stepping right up in the latter’s space, locking his blade under his patron’s chin, sliding his hand over those bandages concealing the left side of his patron’s face. The closeness excited him; he could hear his own pulse drumming loudly in his ears, drowning nearly everything else out.

 

“That was amazing, I daresay.”

 

Takasugi trembled in his grip; it wasn’t out of fear, but excitement. He felt more than heard that crazy little laugh. He did not move, even as Takasugi was flipping the grip he had on his sword, turning it about and lifting it until the sharp edge rested, with almost romantic precision, right against the back of Bansai’s knees.

 

Takasugi’s voice was a whisper right into the crook of his neck.

 

“I wonder what will move faster: your blade cutting my throat open or my blade slicing your legs in half?”

 

“Would you like to find out?”

 

“You don’t mean that.”

 

Bansai didn’t answer. He breathed in, enjoying the feel of Takasugi’s body against his, committing the man’s scent to memory. He sunk his blade into the man’s flesh deeper, drawing blood. Takasugi only sighed, arching up, welcoming Bansai’s blade.

 

Another whisper, low and hushed, louder than the chafe all around him, in his ears.

 

“I know what you want now.”

 

He could end it, then. The cut would be clean; the scenario, only too perfect. Instead, however, he was remembering tiny little nothings keyed out on his piano, and the almost touch of fingers against his own.

 

Bansai removed his blade from Takasugi’s neck. He stepped away, moving back, sheathing his sword. Takasugi turned around to face him, holding his sword low over the bridge. He was putting one hand to his neck, getting blood on his fingers, bringing them to up to his mouth.

 

“I forfeit, Takasugi-dono. I need no payment.” He chuckled then, as if remembering an old joke. “I will not fail you next time, I daresay.”

 

Takasugi merely licked his fingers and smiled.


	2. Open up and let  me inside.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A possible look into how Kawakami Bansai and Takasugi Shinsuke met, and why Bansai follows Takasugi in the first place. The second part of many.

The summons came after a month of radio silence, in the form of a single slip of paper wrapped in black silk sitting on top of the lid of his piano. There was nothing but a date, a time and an address, along with a sprig of _higanbana_ , the red flower of longing and unresolved karma. Of the sender himself, there was no trace but the faintest scent of hashish, cloves and opium staining the paper, and the fine, strict lines of the characters etched in black ink across the paper. The address was not a place, per se, but a boat docked in one of the canals criss-crossing Old Yoshiwara. It was a small but grand affair built in the traditional style, stringed with round, colored lanterns, manned by a single, blind boatman, sporting multiple rooms.

 

Kawakami Bansai stepped onto the boat right at the stroke of the clock. The paper lamp by the entrance rustled in the wake of his entrance; he did not care if he had been noticed. There was no need for secrecy anymore. After inquiring with the boatman, Bansai set off, heading for the room furthest from the entrance. He studied his surroundings as he walked, hearing his boots rap against the cedar flooring, feeling the gentle sway of the waves under the weight of the boat. Takasugi Shinsuke’s signature was on everything, it seemed, from the scent of opium to the strange art on the _shoji_ doors to the preference for red and black on the frames, the screens. All of that, though, were minor things compared to the room he finally entered.

 

The scent of opium was the strongest there; it was the first thing he noticed, beyond the smoke cloying all around him, from a pipe, and from the candles scattered about the room and the odd light filtering in from the lanterns. No walls, only the door he had stepped through, and black wood curtains pulled low over the openings on the other three corners. There are some personal affects scattered about in the corners: a shamisen, an incense burner, a tea set, a sword rack, a pile of books. Nothing was of greater interest, however, than the bed in the center: a large one, raised on a platform and half-concealed by bamboo blinds painted with the same flower pressed against Bansai’s thigh, with the invitation he had slipped into the pocket of his pants.

 

“Good evening, Takasugi-dono,” the musician said, speaking to the shadow reclining beyond the blinds.

 

There was a quiet hum in response, and the slight silhouette of his favorite patron shifted about, over the sheets. A hand peeked out from under the blinds, rapping the ash out of a pipe into the box by the side of the bed before it disappeared again. The next thing that appeared was a foot before the silhouette shifted again, pushing itself up.

 

“You are right on time. How surprising.”

 

Bansai reached out, shutting the door behind him. He never took his eyes off of Takasugi’s silhouette; his headphones were on, but he had turned the music off long ago. “Have I ever been late?” he asked, as he listened to the rustle of silk, the human movements.

 

“Fair enough. Although…” there was a pause, accentuated by more rustling. Takasugi was seated now, one leg dangling off the edge of the bed, fringed by the end of his kimono. His shadow lifted its hands towards his head: a moment later, the edge of a bandage came loose, and started to pool to the floor. “Given the fact that we have not spoken for over a month, I could only wonder.”

 

Bansai was moving before he was even aware of it; his body, it seemed, had responded to the sight of those bandages snaking to the floor, and had wanted to move closer and take them in his hands. He pushed the blind in front of him aside, stepping up to the side of the bed.

 

“A month is a long time, I daresay. Were you hoping I would go and seek you out?”

 

“No.”

 

Takasugi did not seem to notice Bansai at all: perhaps he was at home with the weight of another’s gaze upon him, even when he was in such a vulnerable state. His kimono was loose, rumpled, perhaps, from him dozing off in it; the bandages were unfurling in his hands, spilling between his fingers. His hair was wet from a bath, and his eyes were far off, distant.

 

The scarring, as each new whorl of bandages reveals, ran deep and old, a sharp contrast to Takasugi’s skin. What was left of the eyelid was sealed shut permanently, it seemed, by clean that ran diagonal from somewhere beyond Takasugi’s hairline and over the socket, and held together by stitches. Used to smooth surfaces as he was, Bansai reached out and pushed the bandages away, letting his fingers run over the scars. A deliberate violation, born out of curiosity and exactly thirty-one days too many of waiting.

 

He expected Takasugi to move away, to snap at him, perhaps, or tease him for his impatience. Nothing came. He was being allowed that indiscretion, if only for a moment.

 

“And I was under the impression that you were indestructible, Takasugi-dono.”

 

Takasugi chuckled in response, calm under the touch of Bansai’s fingers. “No one is indestructible,” he said. “It is foolhardy to even consider the thought.”

 

Bansai hummed, echoing what he heard only moments before from Takasugi himself. He bent lower until his face was exactly even with Takasugi’s, and moved to take off the rest of the bandages.

 

“And is it because of this belief that you are stronger?”

 

“Is it? I only speak of what I can do and what I believe I am, not of what I cannot do or what I am not.” Takasugi tilted his head, soft and curious. “Why do you hide your eyes?”

 

“It adds to the mystery, doesn’t it?”

 

“So you won’t tell me.”

 

The smile on Takasugi’s face was kind but unrelenting. He snaked one hand up, latching unto one of Bansai’s wrists. The musician could feel their warmth and pressure against the pulse thrumming away beneath his skin. He tipped his head down in a humble bow, putting his shades within reach of the man’s fingers.

 

All of it was an exchange, a means of establishing trust and familiarizing themselves with the new bond that had formed between them. He wondered, idly, what Takasugi would think now that he could see his gaze wander over the latter’s form, down his neck and at the curve of his shoulder, tracing the point where his kimono ended and his skin began.

 

Takasugi’s answer was in how his lips turned up further, in quiet amusement. The shorter man leaned forward, coming just close enough to whisper right into Bansai’s ear.

 

“I want you to join me. I may need someone like you, for what I am planning.”

 

Bansai turned his face until they were almost pressed cheek-to-cheek.

 

“Why me?”

 

“Because I want to have the luxury of watching you. Because you are, perhaps, the most skilled assassin I have ever encountered.” A pause, followed by small arms reaching out, snaking around Bansai’s neck. He could feel the touch of lips moving just over his ear. “Because you are the only one by whose hands I want to die by, after I’ve destroyed everything.”

 

“So you are mine to take?” the query was followed up by Bansai reaching down, letting his hands explore what his eyes had been looking at only moments earlier. Takasugi only laughed; it was a small and husky sound. The swordsman, it seemed, could laugh freely in the presence of a man could easily wring his neck with the very hand that sliding over his skin.

 

“Am I?”

 

Those words marked his place. Bansai pressed his fingers against the other man’s shoulder, feeling the fabric, the skin, the muscle beneath. He pulled back in the next moment, collecting himself beneath another cool smile.

 

“How may I be of service to you now, Takasugi-dono?”

 

Takasugi withdrew his arms, pulling back, running a hand through his hair. So smug, he was, so utterly self-assured.

 

“You can start by changing my bandages.”

 

***

The query came later, breaking the silence that had fallen between them, breaking the distance with the touch of Takasugi’s hand against Bansai’s cheek.

 

“You can be very gentle when you want to be, can’t you?”

 

Bansai paused, glancing sidelong at Takasugi and discovering that the latter was smiling at him again. The younger man had been watching him at work, searching his face, measuring his reaction.

 

It had been Bansai’s first real test, being allowed that close and given only enough leeway for his mind to wander into all sorts of dark places. The musician was impatient, faintly unsettled by how his new patron could invade his space and challenge his cool with little else but a look and the simple act of breathing the same air as he did. He knew that Takasugi could sense it. He knew, as well, that Takasugi did not care.

 

It took him a beat too long to respond.

 

“I try my best when the situation calls for it.”

 

Bansai turned away, tying the ends of the bandages. He was ready to pull back and retreat, thinking, perhaps, that he could pick up the shamisen he had spotted in the far corner of the room and play a song: anything, really, to keep his hands busy. He was stopped short by the feel of Takasugi turning against him, and Takasugi’s hand moving down, skimming past his neck and over his belly, hidden by the leather of his coat.

 

“And what, pray tell, does the situation call for now?”

 

Words were not going to do, it seemed, and he was tired of boundaries. Bansai moved in, planting a supple kiss against the curve of Takasugi’s jaw. He ignored the murmur of Takasugi’s breath, the feel of his eye on him. He ignored the cold and logical admonition of his own conscience at the back of his head, calling for control, discretion. His hand glided down Takasugi’s neck and dove under the neckline of his kimono, slipping it off of his patron’s shoulders. His other hand moved as well, taking Takasugi’s hand from his face, putting it between his own legs.

 

In the next moment, when Takasugi responded in kind, shifting under his grip to let Bansai disrobe him and taste/touch as he pleased, he knew that there was going to be no resistance. Good: that only made things easier.

 

Satisfied, the musician put his lips against the skin over his patron’s clavicle, tasting it, committing the detail to memory. His hands continued their exploration, feeling for what was hidden underneath Takasugi’s robe: the fine line of his ribs, the curve of his waist, and the corner of his hips. Takasugi’s own hand remained between his legs; he caught, almost distractedly, the tug of his belt coming off, the soft whine of the zipper of his pants going down. Bansai planted his hands on Takasugi’s shoulders and pushed him down, with his force and his weight. His lips move over Takasugi’s chest, making their way to his nipples. He worried them with his teeth; first one, then the other. He felt the other suck in a little air and quiver; it was the first real reaction he had managed to ring out from Takasugi. He felt himself grow harder at the sound.

 

“Eager, aren’t you?”

 

Takasugi was watching him again, tilting his head against the pillows, tracing the progress of Bansai’s mouth on his skin and hands on his body; he kept his hand between Bansai’s legs, teasing the man’s cock from over the cloth of his underwear. The smirk on his lips infuriated Bansai nearly as much as it thrilled him. He showed his patron as much, by sliding one hand close to Takasugi’s own crotch, fingers grazing the soft, inner skin of his thigh.

 

“I think ‘thrilled’ is a better word, Takasugi-dono.”

 

The musician pulled back, taking off his clothes: his coat first, then his shirt. He kept his pants on – far and enough that his cock was out and almost painfully hard. And all that while, Takasugi watched him.

 

“Thrilled, mm? _Clearly_ , you are.”

 

He snaked a hand around the back of Takasugi’s head, dragging him up and forward; he wanted to kiss those arrogant lips, pry open that mouth with his tongue. Takasugi responded in kind, tasting him just much as Bansai was tasting him. His palms rested themselves on Bansai’s cheeks; his fingers tanged themselves, quite neatly, in Bansai’s hair. The rest of the space between them rapidly disappeared as the musician pressed closer, locking his hips against Takasugi’s lips, melding his skin with Takasugi’s skin. When the kiss was done, while both of them stopped to catch their breaths, he slipped his hand low and between them both and palmed Takasugi’s crotch through the cloth of his fundoshi. He smirked at how the gesture made Takasugi tremble.

 

“And what are we to do about _this_ , I daresay.”

 

“Lost?”

 

The word was a hiss against his ear, quiet and mocking. Bansai shoved Takasugi down again, with a single hand around the man’s neck; the force of the gesture was enough to make the latter wince. The musician did not care: he kept his grip steady, ignoring the shake of Takasugi’s breath under the press of his fingers as his free hand pulled the smaller man’s cock free of its trappings and down past the latter’s legs. When that was done, he let one finger stray back up, smoothing the tip of Takasugi’s cock. The gesture made Takasugi swallow.

 

“Do I look like I’m lost?” he asked, flicking it a bit, as if it were his tongue down there, licking at the rim. He was treated to the feel of Takasugi squirming against him, to the sight of Takasugi’s eyes fluttering just beneath his eyelids, to the sound of his hitched breaths melting into gasp.

 

No words; his patron, it seemed, was finally overwhelmed by the magnitude of his own need. Bansai bent down to kiss him again, lending him air. He kept his fingers wrapped around the column of Takasugi’s neck as he used his other hand to stroke him off. The man’s arms were free; he could fight Bansai off if he wanted to. There was nothing, though, but quivering and trembling and the roll of Takasugi’s hips against his, the sound of his patron’s moans against his ear.

 

***

He lost himself in the next few moments: the taste of Takasugi’s mouth was good, and the heat of the other’s skin made his own hum. He had done this with others before, had thought them to be beautiful. None of them compared, however, to the man he had beneath him, the one he was driving mad with the touch of his tongue, his hand.

 

Takasugi was a different creature now, a far reach from his smiling patron and from the mad dancer he became on the battlefield. He wasn’t looking at Bansai anymore: he was pressing his face against the side of the pillow, gasping over the sheets. His one good eye, however, cracked open when Bansai finally withdrew his hand from his neck; he sucked in a breath, looking at him as if he wasn’t really seeing him at all.

 

As he popped his fingers into his mouth, lubricating them with his own saliva, Bansai studied the bruises that had flowered on the column of Takasugi’s neck, in the wake of his fingertips. He looked over the rest of the man as well, admiring his handiwork, counting the bite marks, the trace of his kisses. When he moved to lift Takasugi up and unto his knees, the latter did not protest; those small hips twitched, even, as if in anticipation for what was going to come next.

 

Bansai knew his duties well. He did not delay further; he only smoothed his fingers over the line of Takasugi’s buttocks, and then slipped two of them inside the other’s ass. He could study, perhaps, the way a full shiver ran down the length of Takasugi’s spine, causing him to moan and arch up against him. He chose, instead, to dwell on the way Takasugi clenched around his fingers, warm and welcoming. Later, when he pulled his fingers out and replaced them slowly with his cock, he relished in the way Takasugi shuddered, and in the sound of him panting not-so-quietly at every inch that sank into him, filling him up.

 

He fucked his new master hard, anchoring him to place with a solid grip on his hips, pressing him between his weight and the bed. He made sure it hurt, because pain always left a deeper mark than any other sensation. He was not, however, overly cruel: he pressed his lips against the back of Takasugi’s neck and offered the closeness of his own body, covering him with warmth. He also made sure that he hit that spot that made Takasugi tremble with pleasure and whimper each thrust.

 

He stayed in when he came, filling Takasugi with more of himself, listening to his own breath come out ragged and uneven, echoing his master’s. No words, even after it was finished. Nothing, even after he finally pulled out, letting his patron collapse unto the sheets and try to learn how to breathe again.

 

Bansai pulled Takasugi’s body against his own, turning the other about to face him, running his fingers through that disheveled hair, the loosened bandages. He shut his eyes, content with drifting away on the roll of the waves beneath their boat.

 

He felt the brush of lips against his cheek, and arms wrapping themselves about him – not his neck, this time, but his waist. He did not move away.

 

***

The rain must have started sometime during the evening, while both of them slept: that much was obvious in how the entire world was already awash with gray and odd shadows by the time he opened his eyes.

 

Bansai was alone on the bed; the pillow carried the scent of Takasugi, and the things he liked to smoke. The pipe, however, sat forgotten on the ash box; tendrils of smoke whiffed up from the end, as the contents burned themselves out.

 

The musician stood up. He listened to the rain a moment, and then left the room. It didn’t take him all that long to locate Takasugi; the sound of running water in the bathroom was too strong, stronger than the sound of raindrops falling all around them.

 

“Good morning.”

 

Takasugi was standing under the rush of the shower head, back turned towards Bansai, face tilted towards the water. He was gloriously naked, of course, cloaked only a little by the steam rising up from the contact of the hot shower water against the tiles. The man glanced over with a smile. The gesture was crooked and confident.

 

“Why don’t you join me?”

 

An order disguised in the form of a question. Bansai shut the bathroom door behind him and moved to obey.


	3. Errands and affairs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a blast from the past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Taking a cue out from a pre-series fic that my friend wrote for some of the details I’ve included here, revolving around Gintoki and Katsura. Read it sometime soon – it’s a lovely, lovely thing.
> 
> Canon details on exactly how Shouyo died and the like remain fuzzy, so I’m taking some liberties.

The crickets were the first thing that the both of them heard, well before they reached their destination – their boat had still been navigating the bend of the river, in fact, when they first caught wind of them. There was an army of them, it seemed, up in the trees, in the grass, behind the rocks, the walls. Their droning filled the air, loud enough to echo in one’s ears long after one had retreated to cooler and quieter places. It would have been fine, perhaps, if it was consistent enough to wash out into the background, like white noise. The singing happened in waves, however, returning whenever one least expected it.

 

Bansai did not know why they were venturing out to a place like that one. He found himself thinking about it yet again when they entered the town; he couldn’t help himself. It was a dismal little place, more a collection of huts and shabby excuses for buildings centered on a rotting temple, half-hidden by the beginnings of a vast forest. They were days away from the capital, so far out from the fringes that the people were either ignorant enough to believe that the Amanto were a myth, or were simply too caught up in struggling to survive to really care who was in power and who wasn’t. The heat was something terrible, stronger than the cool air that should’ve been part and parcel with proximity to a forest: it baked the ground and danced in waves just over in the distance, whenever one dared to look too far ahead.

 

“You look troubled, Bansai. Care to tell me what’s on your mind?”

 

Takasugi was, of course, amused – when had he ever been anything _but_ amused at someone else’s discomfort? The bandaged man smiled up at him from under the cover of the straw hat he was wearing, to keep the light out of his eyes and the heat off of his head.

 

“I’m merely cynical. This place doesn’t look like it’s capable of housing human beings, I daresay, let alone radicals.”

 

“Whoever said anything about radicals living like human beings?”

 

Takasugi paused at the largest junction in the village – the “square”, with its temple and its decrepit market stalls. He surveyed their surroundings a moment before drawing out the map he had kept folded in one of his sleeves. “The end of the war had all of us scattering to the farthest corners of the country,” he murmured, as he studied the paper in his hands. “A few even stowed away overseas. Those who still believed had to survive at any cost, even if it meant giving up their dignity.”

 

Bansai chose not to comment. He studied his master, seeing him as he was now and attempting to imagine what he might have been like back then, a youth of sixteen or seventeen summers standing with an army of hundreds. He wondered, as often as he did, how many Amanto Takasugi had killed, how many people he had murdered in the name of justice before the war had taken his eye. He wondered, as well, how many others Takasugi had moved on to kill after that.

 

Takasugi folded the map up again, setting off to the west in the direction of the forest. Bansai chose to walk behind his leader rather than fall in step at his side. Takasugi glanced back at him just once in open amusement before simply turning forward again, letting Bansai have his way.

 

In the months that came after Bansai had decided to follow Takasugi, the two of them had spent much of their time traveling across the country, rebuilding the Kihetai. Most times, Takasugi walked wherever he pleased, winning over the newly displaced – the orphans, the widowed, the misfits, the criminals, or simply anyone who wished for nothing else but the world to end – over with his words and his smile. Sometimes, he called upon specific individuals who used to fight alongside of him, or was, in one way or another, connected to the people who used to fight with him and had not been able to make it out of the war alive. Still other times, he tracked down the source of a rumor about this-or-that veteran, or so-and-so deserter and chased after it, ferreting out the ghosts, offering them redemption. They almost always walked away successful. The few who could not be moved quickly proved that they had not been worth the effort, by suicide or however else.

 

Takasugi did not speak at length about the war: whatever Bansai learned of it came in odd remarks, clipped statements. He said close to nothing about himself: those details were ones Bansai gleaned through second or third hand accounts, question sessions after sex, and personal observation. All of that, however, was precious little compared to what he should have been able to get out of anyone else.

 

He knew about the man named Shouyo, the school, the way the villagers had tipped the Amanto off and stood by, doing nothing, as the invaders rounded up the teachers and many of the students, locked them in, and burned them inside. He knew about the army that had formed years after, headed by three of its surviving students, supported by a fourth youth from the southern islands. He knew that Takasugi had been one of them. He also knew that the mere mention of the names of his schoolmates or the swordsman from the south in Takasugi’s presence could get a man killed. Bansai had discovered that the hard way; he had cuts on his hands, right across the upper pads of his palms, from the time he had had to catch and pull away the knife that Takasugi had tried to drive through his chest. He had fucked the anger out of his leader, in successive rounds.

 

To his credit, Bansai had managed to dig around a bit before Takasugi had snapped. Others had died for less.

 

“Stop daydreaming, Bansai. We’re nearly there.”

 

They had left the village proper, and stood on the start of a path that meandered its way towards the forest. Takasugi was far ahead; he already stood right at the mouth of the forest. He was standing in the shadows of the trees, lifting an eyebrow in Bansai’s direction. The musician only smiled, dipped his head in apology and dutifully picked up the pace.

 

It took them about ten more minutes of walking before they reached their destination. There was a clearing and a hut beside an ancient lake, just as their informants had described: the smoke rising up from the chimney was sure indicator that it was, indeed, occupied.

 

“Wait here. Follow me in if I’m not back in an hour.”

 

Takasugi set off without waiting for Bansai to respond. That was, of course, expected: the man never allowed anyone else to witness his meetings with the people he was trying to win over. Bansai watched his leader leave for a moment before settling his back against the nearest tree.

 

It wouldn’t take long, if he was lucky.

 

***

The sun was not so oppressive in the clearing. Much of its light filtered through the trees – tall ones, taller than the like Takasugi had seen in the past. There were no crickets, no odd human rabble: even Bansai’s presence was fading from his awareness, blending in with his surroundings. Takasugi, however, took pains to move quietly not because he was loathe to disturb the stillness, but because stealth brought particular advantages. After numerous engagements, Takasugi felt best that those whom he visited did not know that he was coming until it was too late.

 

He did not have much to go on, with this one. Unlike many of the others, the details had been sparse and the rumors nonexistent. Part of him was even inclined to consider the possibility that this trip out might lead him nowhere. That did not irritate him nearly as much as he might have expected. Achieving what he had set out to do would take time. He was patient when he needed to be.

 

Takasugi moved up the path, taking note of his surroundings, marking any possible escape routes and the oddities of the terrain. He slowed down, however, the moment he was close to the door, and paused right in front of it, taking time out to listen for any noises within. That he heard nothing was the first indicator that for all of his care, his approach might have been noticed. He slid the door open with his left hand – his right, his sword hand, stayed on the hilt of his blade. He managed to take a few steps inside the house before he was attacked; it was a strike he had been more than ready for.

 

It was not the first time that someone he had attempted to visit attacked him on the get go. Many of the war’s survivors were still haunted by the way things had ended, held prisoner by their own paranoia, quick to lash out at whoever threatened what remained of their peace of mind. They, however, had been easy to subdue. This one ended up taking a bit more work than a turn of a heel and a proper hit with the flat of his blade. Still, a round of sword blows and a bit of scuffling in the semi-darkness of a rude cabin hardly constituted a fight, and it wasn’t long before Takasugi had his opponent backed against a wall, with his sword at the latter’s throat. It was only in that moment – when they were pressed close, close enough for their breaths to mingle in the air between their faces – which he got a good look at the man he had sought out.

 

He had not thought that he would ever see that face again.

 

“Zura.”

 

“Takasugi.”

 

The cabin went still all around them. He could hear nothing, it seemed, even the sound of his own breathing.

 

***

“I survived through the kindness of some of our old supporters. They took me in after our defeat in Fukushima and nursed me back to health.”

 

The tea was finally ready. Kotaro Katsura removed the kettle from where it had been hanging over the fire and poured its contents into two cups. It was an awkward movement, slow and shaky: he wasn’t using his dominant hand. The nerves were still strange in that one, after a sword blow had nearly destroyed it.

 

“I haven’t heard anything since they hid me away here… the people who aided me feel that it’s better if I recover first before I rally the troops, since there’s a price on my head. As such, I couldn’t have known that you were coming. I didn’t even know you were still alive.”

 

He rose to his feet with care, putting as little weight on his mangled left leg as possible. He limped into the sitting room, set the tray – with its kettle, its rice balls and its cups – at the center, and arranged himself in the far corner, exactly opposite to where his guest of the moment was.

 

Takasugi did not stir. He remained sitting on the sill of the window overlooking the lake, the spot he took up the moment he had finally taken his sword from Katsura’s neck. He had not looked once in Katsura’s direction since then.

 

“Finding me should have been next to impossible. You either had help, or you’re rebuilding the Kihetai.” Katsura reached out for his cup and took a sip. “Which one is it?”

 

Silence, yet again. Given the way they had departed years ago, with the smashed sake cups and the collar grabbing and the shouting, that Takasugi had not killed him on the spot was a surprise. His silence was worrisome. Katsura expected rage, expected drawn blades and accusations. He did not know what to make of the deathly stillness.

 

He spoke again, because it was easier to do that than to think.

 

“If you’re after the Amanto in our government, I’ll help you once I’ve recovered. There’s still a chance to change things, and if the two of us worked together…” he trailed off. He did not mean to. Memories were terrible things. Guilt was worse. “I want to keep fighting. You do as well, don’t you?”

 

“I will not fight with a traitor.”

 

Takasugi had finally turned to face him. Katsura knew that look. It was the same one Takasugi used to get on the battlefield when they were surrounded by their enemies, and he had every intention of taking them all down to hell with him.

 

“Well? Have you anything to say? Or do I take your silence as your willingness to accept that I am right?”

 

“You went mad, Takasugi.”

 

“I was fighting for the cause.”

 

There was music coming in from somewhere beyond the cabin; a lone shamisen. Odd: no one in the village, even the girls serving at the temple, where capable of playing one. Katsura couldn’t make out the notes. His hands remained folded around the teacup in his hands, pale and still.

 

“We’ll end up crossing paths again, you know – we need each other. If we start something, perhaps Gintoki will come around.”

 

He knew, distantly, that he had made a mistake the moment those words had left his lips, the second that name entered the conversation. He couldn’t help himself, it seemed. He hadn’t been able to convince Sakata Gintoki, when the two of them had run into each other. He didn’t want to have another one of the people he might have called his friends in another life leave.

 

Perhaps a part of him knew, as well, that if there was anything that could catch Takasugi’s attention, it would be the name of the one person they had all placed their faith in, during the war. The one person who could make Takasugi heel. The one person Takasugi might have felt just a bit more for, out of all of them.

 

Takasugi was standing, abandoning his place at the window sill. He did not speak again until he was at the door.

 

“That person no longer exists to me.”

 

By the time Katsura managed to lift himself up and head for the door, Takasugi was gone.

 

***

Bansai had been in the middle of his first song when Takasugi emerged from the cabin. His master said nothing to him; he only walked fast, heading back the way they had come. Bansai took his shamisen up and followed him.

 

“So there was nothing?”

 

Takasugi did not answer.


	4. Deny, deny, deny.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wanting so much, it makes one sorry.

Moonlight filled his vision the moment he opened his eye. Everything around him was cool and quiet – a strange contrast to the warm bed sheets he was sprawled on. They bore signs of the previous nights, of hours spent fucking/feeling everything.

 

Takasugi watched the window, tracing, in his exhaustion, the way the moonbeams washed over everything in the room, painting it all in its eerie glow. Every inch of him ached, protesting over the fact that he was awake too soon after so much activity. What time was it anyway? He shouldn’t care about such things, but there was always something to do these days. There were so many places to go to, so many things that needed to be done.

 

The man let out a soft sigh, brought a hand up to his face to wipe the sweat off his brow, and turned his head away from the window. He lifted himself up on one elbow, reaching for the brazier and the pipe from where he had left it at the side of his bed. He heard the one lying beside him shift against the sheets. He did not turn around, not really: he only moved to lie down on his stomach, propping himself up just a bit to bring the pipe up to his lips and light up. He felt his companion’s hand slide under the sheets covering the lower half of his body, skimming over the small of his back.

 

“So you’re awake.”

 

No answer, as expected: just the slow crawl of Kawakami Bansai’s fingers up his spine. His touch never failed to wake up every nerve in his body, making him resonate in a way that he had thought he had forgotten. It made him remember the bite of silk strings wound about his wrists, the shakiness of his own thighs and knees, the sound of that voice in his ear. The press of Bansai against his entrance, the feel of the musician inside of him.

 

(It also made him remember things he had cut away from himself, in the time he had spent fighting the Amanto alone, in the years he had spent in prison, not-so-quietly going insane.)

 

Bansai’s lips had replaced the touch of his fingers, kissing the curve of his back, breathing prayers over his spine, murmuring his admiration with teeth marks. The skin had a mind of its own, and was accustomed to repetition: it was easy, then, to see what was happening in the present and juxtapose it against the many yesterdays before it.

 

(Too many, in fact, because in losing one’s self, it was easy to sink too deep into what was better left to lie in the rain of one’s imagination and rust away into nothing.)

 

There was a hand reaching for his face, turning it away; another hand wove its fingers between the ones that he had clutched around a pipe, gently removing it from his grip, setting it aside. The first kiss was small and chaste; the ones that followed were not. He lost himself in them.

 

He wanted to taste Bansai again, because the musician was his to keep.

 

(He wanted to taste Bansai in order to reaffirm the difference. That was that now and not before. That the man did not remind him, in the least, of one who had left him behind.)

 

***

“What time is it?”

 

The ghosts were still chittering away at the back of Takasugi’s head, but it was easier, at least, to ignore them. He was on his back, breathless, awake. Bansai was moving over him, going lower, kissing him, tasting his skin. They had fucked already, but it looked like they were going to do it once more.

 

“Does it matter?”

 

Bansai shifted closer, moving against him. The heat of the other man’s body almost made the breath catch in his throat. Still sensitive, too sensitive.

 

Takasugi steeled himself, pursing his lips, taking his gaze from the ceiling and focusing it on Bansai instead. His body was humming from under the weight of all the attention Bansai was giving him. He tried to ignore it.

 

“Of course it does.”

 

Bansai only responded by kissing his mouth. When he did not respond, when he tried to turn away, the musician’s hand drifted down, stroking the tender skin on the inside of his thigh. The weight and the touch made him squirm. He lost sight of the wall of the room they shared, catching, instead, the light in Bansai’s eyes. The noise was building up again; his head felt light and strange.

 

He forgot to struggle, when Bansai moved his mouth down there, marking his thigh with quiet kisses. Maybe it would have been best to sink into the other man again, to lose himself to the act rather than his own thoughts. It was convenient and maybe even right—

 

– But when did it become that way? When did the man who was supposed to serve him stop becoming a tool to use/a toy to play with? When did they get that close, that familiar?

 

(When did he start needing it? When did he start remembering G—)

 

Bansai was moving his knees aside, attempting to spread him open. Takasugi shifted out of his grip.

 

“We’ve done enough.”

 

He felt Bansai’s eyes on him as he turned away. He ignored it.

 

***

A cold (solitary) shower later, they were on opposite sides of the sitting room. Bansai was sitting by the doorway, with his shamisen: his typical spot, and the usual way he passed the time, plucking at strings, listening to the sound of them fade. Takasugi stayed by the window, armed with his pipe and a book. It was at morning already, but hours before sunrise. Old Yoshiwara was silent, and the sounds of the city were too distant to come through to them.

 

There was nothing peculiar about the scenario: that was how they usually were, when there was nowhere to go and no one to meet. The quiet, however, bothered Takasugi. It was perfect, so perfect it made everything, from the tiniest noise to the weight of the air, grate on his nerves.

 

He had been unsettled since his meeting with Katsura. ‘Unsettled’, in fact, didn’t even begin to cut it. He wanted to stop (the memories) thinking. He wanted to (stop the noise) relax. No amount of smoking or drinking or fucking could help him, it seemed.

 

Bansai’s fingers shifted up; his plectrum struck another note, searing the air with another sound. Takasugi brought the pipe back to his lips – the smoke rushed out in a restless, irritated huff. He had been staring at the same page for the past ten minutes. He spoke to distract himself.

 

“I gave you an assignment. Shouldn’t you be preparing?”

 

His own words sounded hollow in his ears; he hoped, for one blind, misguided second, that Bansai wouldn’t notice. From the way Bansai looked at him a moment before setting his shamisen aside, he knew that the musician had.

 

“I thought you trusted my skills, Takasugi-dono.”

 

“A slip-up could revise my opinion of you quite easily.”

 

Bansai didn’t answer him, at least not in words; he could hear the man standing up, opening the door, leaving. It was in the man’s absence that Takasugi finally noticed how stifling it had been for him as of late, to have Bansai there but not there, always within reach, always hovering, always ready to act on his word. When had that started? He had been perfectly fine with it before. Tools were meant to stay close at hand. They existed to be used.

 

 _We need each other._

 

He chased the memory away with a drag of his pipe.

 

“Would you like a drink?”

 

Absorbed as he was at trying (not to remember/rediscover was normal was) to read his book, Takasugi had failed to notice that Bansai had returned; the musician was sitting in front of him now, setting a tray with a sake bottle and two cups on the floor, smiling, serene as ever.  
A name came to mind, and the recollection of a different pair of eyes beyond the one watching him now: deep red, like old wine. Silver hair.

 

“Did I not tell you to prepare?”

 

“I cannot leave until I am sure that you are comfortable.”

 

“How remarkably attentive of you.”

 

He liked to think that it was nothing but a light tease. No veiled threat, no tension lining the edge of his words. He had no past, no future. There was nothing but the moment, no yesterday to consider. To drown in.

 

Bansai was setting the tray aside. The cups and the bottle barely rattled, barely made a sound, but it was already too loud for Takasugi’s tastes.

 

“Something is bothering you.”

 

“It’s hot. I’m tired.”

 

 _Excuses, excuses._

 

The shadows were leering at him. Takasugi set the book aside, plopped his chin on one hand, looked away. Better that than looking within, to where they were waiting.

 

Bansai was moving again, shifting closer, lifting his foot, kissing his toes before pressing his thumbs against the sole. The musician drew smooth lines between the skin, moving down until he reached the ball of his foot, then back up. Takasugi knew that the man was only trying to appease him, to help him relax. The gesture had the exact opposite effect.

 

“I don’t need a massage.”

 

“Maybe so, but you do need a distraction.”

 

Smooth as ever, even while he was kissing Takasugi’s ankle, shin, knee. The noise was building up again, with every touch of that lips against his skin. His head hurt all of a sudden, with the sharp abruptness of a blow that he hadn’t ever seen coming.

 

Takasugi sucked in a calming breath, shifting one hand up to his face. The old ache was resurfacing, centered around his missing eye, the old stitches and scars. The light in the room was painful to look at.

 

“Are you all right?”

 

Bansai was reaching up, attempting to touch his cheek. Too hot, too close, toomuchlikethatone—

 

“I’m fine.”

 

Light headed, shaky, sick. He attempted to brush Bansai’s hands away. In the next moment, however, those hands were circled around his wrists, dragging him to the floor. The impact knocked the wind right out of him.

 

“Something is wrong.”

 

Bansai was not smiling anymore. The man was pinning him down, keeping his hands on his wrists and his weight on Takasugi’s body. It should have been easy to throw him off, or to at least attempt to fight. He could do nothing, however, but try not to shake, try to remember how to breathe.

 

“You’ve said nothing since we returned from that little village. You haven’t even told me what you saw there. Who you met.”

 

He tugged one wrist free. Bansai merely shifted, taking that and his other wrist up in one hand, slamming them both against the floor once more. That left the musician’s hand free to wrap around his throat. A familiar scenario.

 

“Who are you remembering? Who do you see now, when you look at me?”

 

An attempt to kick at the taller man’s legs earns him nothing but fingers tightening around his neck.

 

“I can make you forget.”

 

The next kiss stole his air.

 

“I can also end it.”

 

When he broke free, it wasn’t on his own strength. It was because the shadows were clawing at his brain and he had to answer them. They used his legs to stand with, his voice to speak with, and his eyes to stare down at the man who had promised to kill him.

 

“Leave.”

 

He was expecting Bansai to retaliate. The musician stared up at him, lips pursed, eyes cold. He knew for a fact that it would be only too simple for the man to try and take him down again. It was for that reason that Takasugi did not take his gaze away from Bansai, up until the latter stood up and walked out the door.

 

Someone was laughing, somewhere. He thought to look, and then remembered that there was no one, nothing but himself and too many ghosts.


	5. Regarder la lumiere.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to burn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter means “Watch the light” in French.

The people in the industry were thrilled, to say the least, when he contacted them again. There had been talk in the past few months, in his absence, wild rumors and greatly exaggerated “accounts” based on shaky facts and sweeping speculations. Perhaps he had cracked under the pressure, they said. Perhaps he had killed someone. Perhaps he had found God. Perhaps he had taken in a lover. Either way, they had nearly given up hope, and had been ready to close what they considered to be a glorious chapter in contemporary Japanese music. There was, after all, profit to be found in mourning a great man. It built up the mystery.

 

Still, at this point? Having him back was better than having him gone. Tsunpo still had crowds to charm, and money to make for them.

 

In the days after Takasugi Shinsuke drove him away, Kawakami Bansai spent his time talking to people. If it wasn’t in person, it was over the phone. If it wasn’t over the phone, it was by email, or SMS, or faxes, or post. He met people in recording rooms, meetings, in press releases, in bars, in clubs. He smiled at people over coffee, at bar counters, over dinner tables, through the glass of a recording booth. They were always so relieved, so happy to see him. They always had something to ask him, and nothing to give in return beyond their gratitude.

 

He realized what he was doing much later, after another day full of people and their noise. He was trying to avoid the silence, the long hours before sunrise when there was nothing but him and his piano or him and his shamisen, fingers striking keys/plucking strings, trying to remember Takasugi’s music.

 

***

 

He was never alone these days. When he was awake, when he was asleep, there were voices around him, always and ever. He couldn’t see any of them – he didn’t need to. They made their presence known to him, coating everything he saw/heard/smelled/touched/tasted with their noise.

 

He had forgotten about them, in the years after the end of the war. They weren’t very happy about that. They liked being remembered. They wanted him to feel sorry.

 

He tried to beg, for a time. If he was contrite enough – if he groveled enough – maybe they’d believe him. Maybe they’d quiet down, and he’d be allowed, once again, to pretend that they weren’t there.

 

He stopped when he realized that maybe he didn’t want to be alone after all.

 

***

 

“You should not be calling this number, you know. You should not even be speaking to me now.”

 

“Forgive me, Kawakami-dono! We don’t know who else to turn to.”

 

Twentieth hour, third day of the first week, first month. Bansai was in his room, standing in front of the glass wall. No headphones; just his mobile pressed between his right ear and his shoulder. He was holding the sheet music of a budding young star that his company was thinking of pirating from another. He had been studying it when the call came in.

 

“Takasugi-dono has gone mad, sir… he is completely beyond our reach. We have lost good loyalists in attempting to approach him.”

 

He could imagine the song clearly just by staring at the notes. Light, innocent, hopeful: it was likely best if they had her perform in acoustic sessions often, should they manage to succeed in stealing her away.

 

“Our ranks are in shambles. There are deserters by the day.”

 

A slight technical flaw, in the bridge. Bansai reached towards the edge of his desk, picking up the pencil lying at the corner. He solved the issue with a single scribble.

 

“Please return to the Kihetai, Kawakami-dono. We need you!”

 

“He told me to leave.”

 

Bansai hung up.

 

***

 

There was a place full of ghosts, far away from Old Yoshiwara, from the cold city of aliens and shadows. He followed the sound of them, pushed on by the voices. He traveled on foot to get there, must’ve been walking for days, didn’t notice at all.

 

He cut down the first one he saw. The body was heavy, warm, possibly male. Pretty blood, slow to flow out. He couldn’t see the sky in their puddles.

 

Someone started sobbing/laughing. Who was it? He sifted through the voices, seeking it out. Maybe he could comfort it somehow. Maybe he could make it better.

 

When he realized it came from his own throat, he walked off to find another corpse to make.

 

***

 

“We will have to cancel the tour to the north, I think.”

 

“Oh?”

 

Fourteenth hour, fifth day of the second week, third month. A corporate meeting with corporate bigwigs talking concerts and profit and money, music, money. Bansai listened to the song in his headphones, tapping his finger to the beat of a snare drum, gut strings. None of the people at the table cared: they knew he was paying attention.

 

“Haven’t you heard the stories? There’s a murderer on the loose, wandering through the towns. He kills whoever he finds out on the streets at night.”

 

“What, and the government can do nothing?”

 

“They don’t care. The crazy’s not in the capital: they can turn a blind eye.”

 

“I feel sorry for the people there…”

 

“Don’t. It’s not like any of them can afford our tickets anyway.”

 

The song ended. Bansai pulled the headphones from his ears.

 

“There was a castle town there before, right? With a school. The Amanto burned it all down.”

 

“Hell if I know, Tsunpo-dono. Is it important?”

 

He only smiled. A round of curious looks, and then they forgot all about it.

 

***

 

He remembered, sometimes, when there weren’t any ghosts to kill. It came back in flashes, brief and sharp moments of clarity like knives of light through his skull.

 

Stifle a sob; laugh. Since he couldn’t stop breathing.

 

***

 

“Greetings. This is Tsunpo, and I daresay I cannot answer your call right now. Please leave a message.”

 

***

 

There are few then there are many then few then many then noise then nothing and bodies in the ground beneath his feet laughing ha ha ha they are lost they know him he knows them buried them once can do it again but they’ll never shut up never shut up shut up sob shut hush don’t cry want a little quiet quiet kill some more then blood is warm nice now they won’t be lonely.

 

***

 

They tried to warn him, the moment he rode into town. Surely he heard the stories. Surely he was a smart man: he’d move on, reach the city further down the road well before sunset and cool off his heels in a big, safe hotel. He was all smiles, painful politeness. Yes, he wouldn’t stay long. No, they needn’t worry. He knew where he wanted to go; he could take care of himself.

 

He climbed the steps up to the ruins of the school and waited.

 

***

 

New noise new smell sword tear the cloth of the dark lift up, step, shove the ghosts, kill the memories go for the throat: end it.

 

***

 

Third hour, first day of the third week, third month. Takasugi Shinsuke had emerged from the ruins of the school, flown over the snowed in courtyard with ridiculous ease and aimed his sword straight for Bansai’s neck.

 

In the few intimate seconds they had, as he was warding off Takasugi’s blade with his own, Bansai had a single, perfect moment to study the shadow the other had become. He was something thin and starved now, wielding a sword chipped and caked with dried up bits of blood and people, grinning at nothing. The bandages he used to carefully change every day were gone, showing off the broken face that had hidden beneath them.

 

Bansai adjusted his footing, gaining just the amount of leverage he needed to shove Takasugi away – the sound of the metal of their blades against each other sounded like a shriek. The other swordsman staggered back, one foot behind the other, rounded forward, flipped the grip of his sword and charged at him again, and again, and again.

 

As they came together, as the courtyard of the ruined school echoed with the sound of their fighting, he focused all of his energies on studying the one that now stood before him, listening for the music, the thrumthrumthrum of his heartbeat, his soul. He could have ended it quickly – this wasn’t the man who had hired him, the one who could take down hundreds with systematic precision. He was facing a monster who knew no cold, no heat, no pain and no fear. He was seeing Takasugi as he used to be, at the moment when the world broke him.

 

He knew Takasugi wasn’t fighting him, but fighting a memory, trying to destroy the ghost of the one who had left him behind. He was no memory. He was no ghost.

 

As he drew his strings tight and wrapped them, quite lovingly, about the limps and neck of his master, he told himself that he was doing them both a favor. As he dragged Takasugi up, pinned him between a broken wall and the warmth of his body, he told himself it was the only way. The younger man was shaking his head like a child, sobbing, screaming, fighting to throw him off. He felt none of the blows; he listened to the quake of the other’s breath.

 

“I’m here, Shinsuke.”

 

He slipped a knife between Takasugi’s ribs, felt him jerk, felt the grind of the blade against flesh, muscle and bone. He kissed the broken lid of Takasugi’s missing eye.

 

“Don’t worry. I’ll never leave you alone.”

 

And he waited for the rasp of Takasugi’s breath to quiet down, stroking his fingers through that blood matted hair, until the man in his arms went still. The courtyard went silent with his master, filling up with snow. He began to hum a song.


	6. Nautical dawn.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here we are, days after the fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're all still in the dark, I would think, about how things fell apart before the series, so I'm taking some liberties here.

Waking up the first time around was like swimming up from the bottom of a very deep lake. Even now, even with a mind bereft of noise and nothing but the pain of rediscovering the fact that one was alive, it took a little more time to register everything.

 

A new room, with new air and a new bed. What he had been doing during the time that he had lost himself was not a distant memory, but in the face of the unfamiliar, it had the same blurred edges and complex mess and mix of so many unidentifiable things as dreams often did.

 

The pain grew worse, blackening everything, driving him back under. Before he could completely sink, he thought he heard something he recognized, thought he felt a warmth and smelled a smell that he had once known. Sleep took him before he could figure out what it was.

 

The second time was an exercise in learning how to breathe again, taking in air one beat after another, trying to remember how to do it right. It was almost as if being driven almost to the point of death meant relearning everything that had once been so simple, the actions he had previously taken for granted. He also knew, though, that he was tired. Tired like he had never been before, hurting in a way that he was not comfortable with.

 

It had been too many years since he had _felt_ the way he was feeling at that moment.

 

The sound came again, pulling him away from his thoughts. What was it? That pluck of a string. The music. His eyes wandered about, absorbing his surroundings a little better. He was not alone, it seemed. He had not noticed until now.

 

A name. The man had a name. He wasn’t a ghost. Wasn’t from…

 

 _Don’t._

 

His throat closed up at the possibility, threatening to choke him. He chose to remember, instead, that hand putting a sword to his neck. That hand slipping a knife between his ribs.

 

“Bansai?”

 

Takasugi Shinsuke could not recognize his own voice. Perhaps he should have cared, but the lack of anything in Kawakami Bansai’s expression grabbed his attention more. The man was sitting in the far corner of the room with his shamisen resting on his lap, against his body. He was not wearing his shades, nor his headphones.

 

“Shinsuke.” The assassin turned away, setting the shamisen aside. “Welcome back.”

 

His name rolling off of another pair of lips, with that self-same lack of effort and natural turn. He remembered, then, and remembered, and ached. Distracted as he was by attempting to bury it, he did not notice the fact that Bansai had drawn close until the older man was already there. He was kneeling by the futon he was on, reaching out to press a finger against the pulse on one of his bandaged wrists.

 

“How long?”

 

“Two weeks.”

 

The familiarity and care with which Bansai conducted himself threatened to shake up the walls around Takasugi’s mind yet again. Still, it was comforting to feel something soft and alive against his skin.

 

He was too weak to show his appreciation. His slumped against Bansai’s palm, letting out a sigh.

 

“Was it difficult for you?”

 

“My place is here.”

 

It was not a ‘no’, or a ‘yes’: it was something far more certain than either one of those answers could have ever been. That realization hurt, as sharp and cold and physical as a blow to the chest.

 

“I am thirsty.”

 

Bansai parted his lips open with a thumb and moved in to kiss him. Takasugi opened up to that mouth pressed over his own, sharing the man’s air.

 

He would not think about how all of that could be his undoing, how that same level of trust had ruined him. Bansai understood. That was all he needed to focus on.

 

***

 

“They left before the war was over, one after the other. Sakamoto first: he was the wanderer among us, and the only one who had not known our teacher. _He_ left next. He went out to join another fight, and just didn’t come back.”

 

Later on, after his bandages had been changed, Takasugi was lying still with his head on Bansai’s lap. He started speaking in spite of himself, thought to stop, then decided not to.

 

“He was the best man out of the four of us. What could take a person years to learn in swordsmanship, he picked up in a month or less. It wasn’t hard to resent him, but doing so was pointless. Types like him simply exist. They’re on a level above everyone else. His skills, though, weren’t what really defined him during the war. It was the fact that he, out of all of us, had the most reason to want to destroy our enemies. They had taken more than just everything he had. They had stolen everything that he could possibly become, as well.”

 

Bansai had taken to running his fingers through Takasugi’s hair. From where he was, the younger man could not see his companion’s expression. Perhaps he could, if he turned to look. Doing that, however, felt like too much effort.

 

“We could have done something, I think, if he had stayed. Perhaps the collapse would not have been so terrible. Perhaps we should not have had to bury that many of us if he had seen things through. But he left, and more of us died. It wasn’t long before the Amanto took advantage of the rift between Katsura and I and tore our forces apart. Katsura was nearly killed. I was dragged in before the Shogunate. They let the Amanto keep me for themselves, calling me a ‘gift’. They enjoyed me up until I broke out of their prison. By then, though, there was nothing left.”

 

Bansai’s hand stilled, resting on the top of his head. It drifted down in the next moment, cupping his face against its palm. He enjoyed the chill of the other man’s skin against his own, but not as much as the way that gesture seemed to hold him in place with its weight, pressing him down, keeping him together.

 

“The blood of our comrades is on all of our hands, but he chose to run away from it. I decided to stare the reality right in the face and do what I could to avenge them. They’re still with me. They aren’t ever going to leave. Maybe I do not want them to.”

 

He could feel his eyes closing. The exhaustion he felt was so utterly complete; the ache of being alive again only made the prospect of drifting back to somewhere dark and quiet all the more appealing.

 

“Did you love him, Shinsuke?”

 

It took him one moment too long to answer.

“What he and I had is something that will remain between us alone. If our paths cross again, I will cut him down myself.”

 

Bansai’s silence stretched out for a long time, long enough for him to think that the issue had been dropped, long enough for him to succumb to the fatigue.

 

“If you can’t, then I will do it for you.”

 

Perhaps he had, indeed, heard Bansai say that. Perhaps he had been imagining it. It did not matter. He could think about it later, if he remembered to.


	7. I will be the water for your thirst.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is how we come back together.

Bansai returned from his latest assignment at noon, right on the dot. He was lucky in the sense that he was coming back ahead of schedule; he knew that well. The mission could have easily taken another turn, forcing him to see everything through personally. Still, the musician could not shake the feeling that he had dawdled for too long and wasted too much time on inconsequential matters. The cause was, after all, nothing without the man behind it.

 

That feeling was confirmed the moment he stepped onto the Kihetai’s flagship. The others were quick to inform him that Takasugi-dono was in a foul mood. He had spent the twelve days of Kawakami-dono’s absence haunting the officer’s quarters of the boat, refusing any offers to assist him, snapping at anyone who dared to approach or had the misfortune of stumbling upon him. The attendants were at their wit’s end, and had taken to leaving food and drink for him at the doorways of the rooms he ended up drifting into. They feared their leader, but they were fiercely loyal to him. Pleasing him was what many of them seemed to exist for.

 

Bansai listened to their grievances politely, and without comment. He set off without asking them where Takasugi was: it was probably one of the rooms on the top floor of the east side of the boat, given the direction that the wind was blowing in. Among those rooms, he knew, for a fact, that Takasugi had a particular fondness for the one with murals of wild clouds, cherry blossom trees and sparrows. He expected to find the leader of the Kihetai sitting by the window, wrapped up in an elegant kimono and a great amount of impatience, armed with his favorite pipe, glaring off towards the ocean. He was right about the window and the kimono, and wrong on every other account. Takasugi was sleeping.

 

The musician lingered a moment in the doorway, taking in the sight of his master slumped against the sill, framed by sunlight and touched by a constant, pleasant wind. He slid the door shut without a sound and approached, fully intending on sneaking up on his master. He managed to get halfway across the room when Takasugi stirred. The younger man’s one good eye cracked open, to trace the rest of Bansai’s progress towards him. “You’re late,” he said, soft, imperious and accusatory. The sound made Bansai smile.

 

“So you were lonely without me, mm?”

 

“Don’t try my patience.”

 

Bansai chuckled in response. He reached out, brushing his leader’s bangs away out of the latter’s eyes. “I daresay that patience is a virtue that you ought to learn, Shinsuke,” he serenely replied, as he bent down, planting a kiss on the other’s forehead. “Good things always come to those who wait.”

 

Takasugi scoffed and looked away, unmoved by Bansai’s affections. “And you ought to know better than to scold me like I’m a child.”

 

Where were the imperious demands, the death threats and the drawn daggers? Months back, at the beginning, there would have been a fight. There might have been bruises, dislocations, maybe a little blood drawn. The Takasugi Shinsuke who was speaking to him now was worlds apart from the quiet and shattered thing Bansai had nearly killed in the process of bringing back from the edge.

 

The last three months had been a journey in white linen bandages, antiseptic and frozen silence, with a Takasugi who did not talk any more than necessary, did little beyond stare out and look at something beyond the skies whenever he wasn't giving out orders. Not another mention of That One nor the other two who had been his comrades, not once, not even another hint beyond the invisible weight pressed down against his neck and on his shoulders and over his lips.

 

There did not seem to be a trace of that at the moment, but there wasn’t any trace of the Takasugi who had sought him out, whom he had decided to follow and eventually kill. What would he find, if he looked hard enough? What would he see, if he listened for a new edge to that voice, or attempted to read a different sort of need – a distinct sort of desperation – on those fingertips? Those questions drove him forward, bringing his hand underneath Takasugi’s chin, tilting the man’s face towards his, forcing him to look. The tremor he felt beneath his leader’s skin was an affirmation.

 

“Can’t live without me now, mm?”

 

Takasugi’s response was swift, in the way one hand went up to strike him. Bansai effortlessly batted it away. He caught Takasugi’s wrist when the other tried again, and pinned it to the wall. The next one soon followed.

 

“Release me, Bansai.”

 

The smoldering look in Takasugi’s one good eye had been enough to send most people fleeing from the room. Bansai merely leaned forward, tracing the other’s earlobe with a single, slow lick.

 

“Now why would I do that?”

 

One leg kicked at his shin. He dragged one wrist down and forward, twisting Takasugi about in a single movement, holding him by his offending arm against his own body. He could feel the shake of his leader’s breath just over his face.

 

“How energetic,” he mildly remarked, staring down rather coolly at Takasugi’s face. The younger man smirked.

 

“Spite has always been my best motivator, has it not?”

 

Still so cold and haughty, even when he was in such a compromising position, even with the slightest trace of pain lining the edge of his voice. Bansai tightened the grip he had on Takasugi’s arm, feeling the man wince. He knew it had been the arm he had mangled up the most during their fight. He did not care. He reached down between Takasugi’s legs, palming the other’s cock through the fabric of his kimono.

 

“Hard already. I’m not surprised.”

 

Whatever snipe Takasugi had for him was lost in a gasp as he started stroking.

 

***

 

It was not too difficult, breaking his leader in. The ordeal of losing his mind and roaming the countryside for months with little sleep and virtually no food or drink plus the shock of his near fatal injuries had weakened Takasugi, making it only too easy for Bansai to subdue him.

 

He was taut, at first, in Bansai’s grip: he barely flinched or shuddered or trembled, and remained silent as best as he could, refusing to acknowledge Bansai and what the other was attempting to do. The musician solved that problem rather quickly. Pain was an excellent teacher, especially when it was coupled with invasive little gestures, with nips/licks/bites/kisses and a steady hand working him up, getting him off. He only moved again when he heard that broken note in Takasugi’s voice. It was not a kind gesture. It was him gripping Takasugi by the hair and pressing the side of his face against the floor.

 

As he stared down at the sight of Takasugi kneeling in front of him, he listened to how his leader attempted to catch his breath and felt the tremble of those muscles against his grip, he wondered, idly, what the bandaged man was thinking. Was he remembering their encounter in the ruins of his old school? Was he recalling what it was like to be helpless, to have one’s life between another’s hands? Bansai let his breath warm the back of Takasugi’s neck, hovering just over the man, feeling for the effect that his mere presence might have. The pervading silence was a bit disappointing.

 

“Being stubborn at this point is only going to hurt you.” He traced the line of Takasugi’s ass with one finger, right before slipping it inside. The gesture made the other quiver. “You should be more honest with yourself.”

 

Takasugi attempted to jerk free again. Bansai bore down on him even more, letting his weight hold the other under, keeping the man from getting his legs out properly from under him.

 

“Did he touch you like this?”

 

And the way Takasugi _stilled_ beneath him was enough of an answer. He pressed another finger in, pushing too deep and too fast on purpose. His reward was hearing the first real sound Takasugi had made since they had started: a low one, a quiet whimper.

 

“Now I will make you forget him.”

 

When he came inside later, he was not gentle. In spite of that, however, when he turned Takasugi’s face towards his to kiss his lips as they climaxed, his master opened up to him completely, moaning into his mouth, showing him just how much the other needed him.

 

They went for two more rounds before tumbling down unto a proper futon, where they could fuck around properly. It was close to sunset by the time they finished.

 

Bansai had nearly succeeded in dozing off when he felt Takasugi move towards him, curling up against his body, wrapping his arms around his waist to pull himself closer. It was a remarkable gesture, affectionate and needy on almost equal counts. It was one that Takasugi had never made before.

 

He said nothing, did nothing but shut his eyes and sleep.


	8. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was a pleasure to burn. Now let's set something else on fire.

“Let’s join forces again.”

 

Kotaro Katsura looked up, turning away from the skyline of Edo, the distant city lights. At first, it seemed as though his one companion did not notice the questioning look in his eyes. That smile, however, betrayed him.

 

“You proposed it to me first, didn’t you? Now I’m saying yes.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Is it important?”

 

Takasugi Shinsuke was smiling up at him from the shamisen he was tuning. He had come to Katsura just as the rain had started falling faster, emerging from the downpour like some sort of creature of the storm. Katsura did not know how the other had managed to find him again, and he figured that for the sake of his own peace of mind, it was best not to ask.

 

His comrade was wearing one too many layers for a summer evening, even if it was one right on the brink of autumn. Earlier, when the short-haired samurai had shifted about, Katsura thought he had caught the white glare of bandages from under his _haori_ , beneath the folds of his kimono. He looked away before he could start staring again.

 

“No, I suppose it isn’t.”

 

One of the serving girls came up, bringing them their dinner. She asked if the honorable samurai would like to partake of some evening entertainment – one of their geisha, perhaps, a fine one. Katsura coldly rebuffed her in favor of his miso soup. Takasugi only smiled, declined, and sent her on her way. They did not speak during the meal, and even after it. No words, in fact, until Takasugi set the shamisen away and rose to his feet. He was preparing to leave.

 

“How shall we stay in touch?”

 

“The usual way. I’ve resurrected all of my old communication lines. You appear to have done the same.”

 

“So I will follow my plan and you will follow yours?”

 

“Hasn’t that how it has always been?”

 

 _No_ , Katsura wanted to say, but then he thought better of it. He stood up as well, folding his hands within the sleeves of his kimono, watching Takasugi as the latter headed for the door.

 

“He may not approve of this.”

 

Takasugi paused; for a long time, Katsura was not sure if the man would respond. Then his comrade turned around.

 

“Then you’re going to have to work hard to convince him, aren’t you? Because if you don’t, then he’ll be in our way.” His smile was sharp. “I don’t plan on hesitating. Do you?”

 

He left well before Katsura could even begin to think of a response.

 

Bansai was waiting just outside the door. Takasugi didn’t even turn to acknowledge him as he passed. The man was his shadow, silent, in perfect sync with his every move, his every breath. There was no need to speak to one’s own shadow.

 

He moved out onto the street, heading back to the ship. There was work to do.


End file.
